The ForZDM consortium met last month from 12th to 14th hosted this time by NXT Control in Vienna.

Installation of the sensors networks and the data storage infrastructure are quite advanced with close delivery dates. Furthermore, specific solutions to act against defects creation/propagation in the lines such as a part variation model for forged axles or FE simulations of critical stages (ex. bottle boring, micro-extrusion) started being implemented.

The next consortium meeting will take place at Tecnalia facilities in San Sebastian from 16th to 18th October this year.

Montronix has got the the interesting opportunity to share to important Poland industrial enterprises, the actual result obtained within the ForZDM project. They have been invited by their official partner/distributor in Poland, EMT Systems which here you can see it´s website. ETM Systems has perfectly organized a double date seminar in their facility plant about safety in production process. Click here to know more about the event and who was attending.

For more information about Montronix check their website here or their Linkedin profile here.

Juanan Arrieta, International R&D Project Manager at IK4-Ideko, one of the ForZDM project partners, explains what Zero Defects Manufacturing is about.

(This article is an extract from an interview for the SPRI, the Basque Business Development Agency. To read the complete interview (in Spanish), click here.)

Zero Defects Manufacturing or just ZDM is one of the main goals of the called Advanced Manufacturing. Sectors as critical as the aeronautical, the railway, the automotive or the wind require increasingly more supervision of each of the parts that are part of the engines or other critical elements that they produce and assemble.

On the other hand, in a context of globalization in which a large part of products are manufactured in Asian countries due to their low costs, manufacturing without defects aims at the excellence of production. This would open a scenario that would reactivate the strength of European companies which several decades ago committed to offshoring and today observe that only with quality products will they be able to recover their markets. "Zero Defects Manufacturing can help shore up our industries because we speak of excellence in production systems, which can lead us to mitigate the threat of globalization by Asian countries. We have to try to do it right at the first time, maintaining excellence and even increasing jobs. If we manage to manufacture better and avoid rework we can achieve it”, explains Arrieta.

Zero Defects Manufacturing is a complex strategy that encompasses all phases of the production: "It is about monitoring what happens throughout the production process: from the design phase to manufacturing and assembly. You have to review everything from the beginning, because if something is wrong in the first stages of production, it will end up affecting the last ones”.

One of the keys of the Zero Defects Manufacturing is how to detect those defects in any of the manufacturing processes and the parts that are manufactured. “Thanks to sensors, we can detect parameters related to the stresses that a piece supports, noise, wear particles that are present in fluids, etc. “This allows us to identify the different types of defects in each phase. In high-compromise pieces that affect 'comfort' or safety, such as those intended for the automotive industry, the railway sector, aeronautics, the construction of wind turbines or gas steam; you cannot afford mistakes in manufacturing, "remembers Arrieta. A very relevant aspect in this sense is the capability to capture and analyze data. Data analytics and machine learning techniques are essential tools for zero defect manufacturing since they support decision making and recommend improvement actions.

Finally, it is worth to remember that Zero Defects Manufacturing involves processes but also the products themselves along their production cycle and the services involved. Again, sensoring, capturing and analyzing capabilities are more and more allowing to anticipate problems and react, for instance, whether it is a part defect or a machine failure.

The 30th BIEMH, held from 28th May until 2ndJune in Bilbao, has broken records this year in terms of figures and technological innovation. The largest industrial fair in Spain has brought together a total of 1,751 exhibiting firms from 21 countries.

TECNALIA has been really active in this fair in presenting the ForZDM project at itsstand as well as having meetings with project partners MONTRONIX and MARPOSS to discuss not only about the project immediate steps but also on further collaborations beyond the project.

The Forzdm solutions has created a really good expectations in manufacturing sector.

Latest developments will be presented by ISW at the next CIRP ICME to be held in July in Naples (Italy).

A smart centering solution for axles after the forging and heat treatment stages and before machining has been implemented. Three different modeling approaches are proposed to compare the nominal geometry of the axle with the measured one from the real part. The position of the nominal geometry within the part can then be optimized through a parametric model. This allows to adjust the conditions at the immediate machining stage avoiding the generation of defects related to miscentering.

The ICME is an acknowledged international forum in intelligent computation methods and tools applied to manufacturing processes and systems sponsored by the CIRP, the world leading association in research on production engineering. For more information about the ICME visit the conference website.

ForZDM is participating in the CIRP CMS 2018 being held this week in Stockholm. The latest results on multi-stage data correlation have been presented by Florian Eger from the ISW. More information about the CIRP CMS on the conference website.

The paper version of the communication “Zero defect manufacturing strategies for reduction of scrap and inspection effort in multi-stage production systems“ presented at the CIRP ICME’17 is now available in Open Access. Click hereto read it and down load it. More about the ICME on the conference here.

The Conference of Intelligent Computation in Manufacturing Engineering 2017 (ICME) which last year was held within the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP) is an annual recurring conference located at the Gulf of Naples, Italy. The 11th edition of the CIRP ICME ‘17 conference was perfectly suited in order to spread the project and to present the project idea with the concept behind it. Representative for all the authors who contributed to the first publication within ForZDM was the PHD-student Florian Eger from the University of Stuttgart (ISW).

The Norwegian industry association Norsk Industri introduces the ForZDM project in their book Veikart for Teknobedriftene, a publication focused on the latest efforts being done by relevant national industries towards their digitalization.

Norsk Industry is an association grouping more than 2.500 companies and approximately 130.000 employees with the aim of promoting a competitive framework for industrial activities in Norway.

Today, we would like to present you Florian Edger. Florian is currently working on the PhD in the context of the ForZDM project. He is one of the youngest members and was hired at the ISW-Institute of Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units as a researcher for this European project. We find interesting to know from the perspective of a young engineer like Florian how such a European project like this can help young people on their careers and his personal vision of it. Following, we will get more into details.

ForZDM continues its way and was present in MECSPE, a local exhibition located in Parma, concretely in the Emilia Romagna region. During days 23-25 March, ForZDM was presented with the collaboration of Montronix.

Partners of the ForZDM project are working during three days in CAF & IDEKO-IK4 facilities, in San Sebastián (Spain). The meeting is devoted to identify defects and possible solutions in CAF axle manufacturing plant, discuss the difficulties and challenges that are being faced in the project and to plan further activities.

Enki attended with success the International trade fair Medica with the presence in the Compamed pavilion. More than 5000 exhibitors from over 70 countries attended this event and there were about a hundred thousand visitors. ENKI participed with an stand in the fair.